Friday, December 23, 2016

Times
were when the population of Cartoonistan was relatively sparse. That was maybe
in the late 1950s and early 60s. Possibly famous cartoonists outnumbered prominent
Cartoon figures like Popeye, Mickey, Donald, Baby Huey, Tintin, Haddok, Archie
and Co., Blondie, Jiggs, maybe Tarzan, and on the Indian papers one recalls
Mandrake, Garth, Prof. Lumiere, the indigenous crop including Chotu and Lambu,
Tik and Tock- Chacha Chowdhary, Modesty Blaise, Simpsons belonged to a later
generation. Toons vs Humans: watch the Movie Review columns in the Papers: animation films rule the roost-they 'garner' I sayyy...more stars than brick-and-mortar ones. Whattsmore-the world's two greatest Democracies are ruled by Toons!

So
there was this masked hood - the Phantom by Lee Falk whose ancestors set about in
the 16th century AD to save Africa from baddies. Our Phantom was the
21st in the lineage and was born Kit Walker*. There was one strip
about Phantom and the Aliens, invaders who were opening their innings on
various cartoon strips. This popular story shows a space-ship land in Bangalla,
and as luck would have it, the first human they run into is the Phantom himself.
Naturally he trounces the aliens with his usual heroics, leaving the skull mark
on the equivalent of their jaws, so that the aliens scurry back into space
assuming that the Phantom faithfully represented the inhabitants of this
planet!

That
was a joke, OK, but the same inductive fallacy takes a heavy toll of humanity,
and wise and dumb are equally susceptible to this phenomenon of generalisation on
a single instance. You had a rowdy Punjabi neighbour, and you’ll pass a whole
life-time believing Punjabis to be an uncivilised lot. Not only that, you’ll leave
a legacy of the belief for your family, as also infect your extended family
called Facebook and Whatsthat! Kids, whose learning proceeds essentially by
observation are notorious generalisers, but so insidious is this tendency, that
your stoutest mental defence will permit of some invaders once in a while.
That’s thinking fast and slow for you (recall the famous book by Daniel
Kahneman).

CHIMAMANDA

Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie, the charming Nigerian writer-publisher recently created this
great TED Talks video, tellingly named “The Danger of a Single Story”. We tend
to get wedded to the first story about a person, place, thing etc., she says,
and confesses about her own acts of omission, cautious as she is. It’s like
this- you say ‘Bangladeshi’ and across your mind the visions that flash past are-
may be refugees from Bangladesh crossing over to Assam, or cheap labour, or
guys wallowing in floods. You have to go there and see with your eyes first. My
son recently visited Islamabad, attending a UN sponsored conference on Human
Rights. The first notable encounter with Pakistan will make anybody’s head
spin. Sporting a beard, he was received by clean-shaven hosts at the airport,
who apologetically requested him to occupy the middle in the pick-up car’s rear
seat. If you sit beside the driver or at the window sporting this beard of
yours, the car will be stopped and checked by Police at each nakabandi, he was
told. The Pakistani hosts confided how after each terror incident in their country, all bearded
men in the vicinity are rounded-up by police (not women, they can’t sport
beards, he, he, he..). Ditto, said my dumbfounded son, we are both like that
only, nice !

Or
why not talk about Nigeria itself!? A Nigerian will be a drug peddler sending
fake lottery emails to the world, forgetting Nigeria is the 7th
largest oil-producing country in the world, whose per capita income is one and
three-quarter times that of India, and whose official language is English!

You
must watch this TED video, or you may like to read this transcript, which I
found worth being read many times over:

I'm a storyteller.And
I would like to tell you a few personal storiesabout
what I like to call "the danger of the single story."I
grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria.My
mother says that I started reading at the age of two,although
I think four is probably close to the truth.So
I was an early reader, and what I read were British and American children's
books. I was also an early writer,and
when I began to write, at about the age of seven,stories
in pencil with crayon illustrationsthat
my poor mother was obligated to read,I
wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading:All
my characters were white and blue-eyed,they
played in the snow,they
ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather,how
lovely it was that the sun had come out.

Now, this despite the fact that I
lived in Nigeria.I
had never been outside Nigeria.We
didn't have snow, we ate mangoes,and
we never talked about the weather. My characters also drank a lot of ginger
beer,because
the characters in the British books I readdrank
ginger beer.Never
mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. And for many years afterwards,I
would have a desperate desire to taste ginger beer.But
that is another story.

What this demonstrates, I think,is
how impressionable and vulnerable we arein
the face of a story, particularly as children.Because
all I had read were books in which characters were foreign,I
had become convinced that booksby
their very nature had to have foreigners in themand
had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.Now,
things changed when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them
available,and
they weren't quite as easy to find as the foreign books.

But because of writers like Chinua
Achebe and Camara Laye,I
went through a mental shift in my perception of literature.I
realized that people like me,girls
with skin the colour of chocolate,whose
kinky hair could not form ponytails,could
also exist in literature.I
started to write about things I recognized.

Now, I loved those American and
British books I read.They
stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me.But
the unintended consequencewas
that I did not know that people like mecould
exist in literature.So
what the discovery of African writers did for me was this:It
saved me from having a single story of what books are.

I come from a conventional, middle-class
Nigerian family.My
father was a professor.My
mother was an administrator.And
so we had, as was the norm,live-in
domestic help, who would often come from nearby rural villages.So,
the year I turned eight, we got a new house boy.His
name was Fide.The
only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor.My
mother sent yams and rice, and our old clothes, to his family.And
when I didn't finish my dinner, my mother would say,"Finish
your food! Don't you know? People like Fide's family have nothing."So
I felt enormous pity for Fide's family.

Then one Saturday, we went to his
village to visit,and
his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basketmade
of dyed raffia that his brother had made.I
was startled.It
had not occurred to me that anybody in his familycould
actually make something.All
I had heard about them was how poor they were,so
that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor.Their
poverty was my single story of them.

Years later, I thought about this
when I left Nigeriato
go to university in the United States.I
was 19.My
American roommate was shocked by me.She
asked where I had learned to speak English so well,and
was confused when I said that Nigeriahappened
to have English as its official language.She
asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music,"and
was consequently very disappointedwhen
I produced my tape of Mariah Carey.

What struck me was this:She
had felt sorry for me even before she saw me.Her
default position toward me, as an African,was
a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity.My
roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe.In
this single story,there
was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way,no
possibility of feelings more complex than pity,no
possibility of a connection as human equals.

I must say that before I went to the
U.S.,I
didn't consciously identify as African.But
in the U.S., whenever Africa came up, people turned to me.Never
mind that I knew nothing about places like Namibia.But
I did come to embrace this new identity,and
in many ways I think of myself now as African.Although
I still get quite irritable when Africa is referred to as a country,the
most recent example being my otherwise wonderful flightfrom
Lagos two days ago,in
which there was an announcement on the Virgin flightabout
the charity work in "India, Africa and other countries."

So, after I had spent some years in
the U.S. as an African,I
began to understand my roommate's response to me.If
I had not grown up in Nigeria,and
if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that
Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes,beautiful
animals,and
incomprehensible people,fighting
senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS,unable
to speak for themselvesand
waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.I
would see Africans in the same way that I,as
a child, had seen Fide's family.

This single story of Africa
ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature.Now,
here is a quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Lok,who
sailed to west Africa in 1561and
kept a fascinating account of his voyage.After
referring to the black Africans as "beasts who have no houses,"he
writes, "They are also people without heads,having
their mouth and eyes in their breasts."

Now, I've laughed every time I've
read this.And
one must admire the imagination of John Lok.But
what is important about his writingis
that it represents the beginningof
a tradition of telling African stories in the West:A
tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives,of
difference, of darkness,of
people who, in the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard Kipling,are
"half devil, half child."

And so, I began to realize that my
American roommatemust
have throughout her lifeseen
and heard different versions of this single story,as
had a professor,who
once told me that my novel was not "authentically African."Now,
I was quite willing to contendthat
there were a number of things wrong with the novel,that
it had failed in a number of places,but
I had not quite imagined that it had failedat
achieving something called African authenticity.In
fact, I did not know what African authenticity was.The
professor told me that my characters were too much like him,an
educated and middle-class man.My
characters drove cars.They
were not starving.Therefore
they were not authentically African.

But I must quickly add that I too am
just as guiltyin
the question of the single story.A
few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S.The
political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense,and
there were debates going on about immigration.And,
as often happens in America,immigration
became synonymous with Mexicans.There
were endless stories of Mexicansas
people who were fleecing the healthcare system,sneaking
across the border,being
arrested at the border, that sort of thing.

I remember walking around on my
first day in Guadalajara,watching
the people going to work,rolling
up tortillas in the marketplace,smoking,
laughing.I
remember first feeling slight surprise.And
then, I was overwhelmed with shame.I
realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicansthat
they had become one thing in my mind,the
abject immigrant.I
had bought into the single story of Mexicansand
I could not have been more ashamed of myself.

So that is how to create a single
story,show
a people as one thing,as
only one thing,over
and over again,and
that is what they become.

It is impossible to talk about the
single storywithout
talking about power.There
is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power
structures of the world,and
it is "nkali."It's
a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another."Like
our economic and political worlds,stories
too are defined by the principle of nkali:How
they are told, who tells them,when
they're told, how many stories are told,are
really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to
tell the story of another person,but
to make it the definitive story of that person.The
Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writesthat
if you want to dispossess a people,the
simplest way to do it is to tell their storyand
to start with, "secondly."Start
the story with the arrows of the Native Americans,and
not with the arrival of the British,and
you have an entirely different story.Start
the story with the failure of the African state,and
not with the colonial creation of the African state,and
you have an entirely different story.

I recently spoke at a universitywhere
a student told me that it was such a shamethat
Nigerian men were physical abuserslike
the father character in my novel.I
told him that I had just read a novel called "American Psycho" --and
that it was such a shamethat
young Americans were serial murderers.

But it would never have occurred to
me to thinkthat
just because I had read a novel in which a character was a serial killerthat
he was somehow representative of all Americans.This
is not because I am a better person than that student,but
because of America's cultural and economic power,I
had many stories of America.I
had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskell.I
did not have a single story of America.

When I learned, some years ago,that
writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoodsto
be successful,I
began to think about how I could invent horrible things my parents had done to
me.

But the truth is that I had a very
happy childhood,full
of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family. But I also had grandfathers
who died in refugee camps.My
cousin Polle died because he could not get adequate healthcare.One
of my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crashbecause
our fire trucks did not have water.I
grew up under repressive military governmentsthat
devalued education,so
that sometimes, my parents were not paid their salaries.And
so, as a child, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table,then
margarine disappeared,then
bread became too expensive,then
milk became rationed.And
most of all, a kind of normalized political fearinvaded
our lives.

All of these stories make me who I
am.But
to insist on only these negative storiesis
to flatten my experienceand
to overlook the many other stories that formed me.The
single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that
they are untrue,but
that they are incomplete.They
make one story become the only story.Of course, Africa
is a continent full of catastrophes:There are immense ones, such as the horrific
rapes in Congoand depressing ones,such
as the fact that 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria.But
there are other stories that are not about catastrophe,and
it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them.

I've always felt that it is
impossibleto
engage properly with a place or a personwithout
engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person.The
consequence of the single story is this:It
robs people of dignity.It
makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult.It
emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.

So what if before my Mexican trip,I
had followed the immigration debate from both sides,the
U.S. and the Mexican?What
if my mother had told us that Fide's family was poorand
hardworking?What
if we had an African television networkthat
broadcast diverse African stories all over the world?What
the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls "a balance of stories."

What if my roommate knew about my
Nigerian publisher,Muhtar
Bakare,a
remarkable man who left his job in a bankto
follow his dream and start a publishing house?Now,
the conventional wisdom was that Nigerians don't read literature.He
disagreed.He
felt that people who could read, would read,if
you made literature affordable and available to them.

Shortly after he published my first
novel,I
went to a TV station in Lagos to do an interview,and
a woman who worked there as a messenger came up to me and said,"I
really liked your novel. I didn't like the ending.Now,
you must write a sequel, and this is what will happen ..."And she went on to tell me what to write in the
sequel.I was not only charmed, I was very moved.Here
was a woman, part of the ordinary masses of Nigerians,who
were not supposed to be readers.She had not only read the book,but
she had taken ownership of itand felt justified in telling me what to write in
the sequel.

Now, what if my roommate knew about
my friend Funmi Iyanda,a
fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos,and
is determined to tell the stories that we prefer to forget?What
if my roommate knew about the heart procedurethat
was performed in the Lagos hospital last week?What
if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music,talented
people singing in English and Pidgin,and
Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo,mixing
influences from Jay-Z to Felato
Bob Marley to their grandfathers.

What if my roommate knew about the
female lawyerwho
recently went to court in Nigeria to challenge a ridiculous lawthat
required women to get their husband's consentbefore
renewing their passports? What if my roommate knew about Nollywood,full
of innovative people making films despite great technical odds,films
so popularthat
they really are the best example of Nigerians consuming what they produce?What
if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider,who
has just started her own business selling hair extensions?Or
about the millions of other Nigerians who start businesses and sometimes fail,but
continue to nurse ambition?

Every time I am home I am confrontedwith
the usual sources of irritation for most Nigerians:our
failed infrastructure, our failed government,but
also by the incredible resilienceof
people who thrive despite the government,rather
than because of it.I
teach writing workshops in Lagos every summer,and
it is amazing to me how many people apply,how
many people are eager to write,to
tell stories.

My Nigerian publisher and I have
just started a non-profitcalled
Farafina Trust,and
we have big dreams of building librariesand
refurbishing libraries that already existand
providing books for state schoolsthat
don't have anything in their libraries,and
also of organizing lots and lots of workshops,in
reading and writing,for
all the people who are eager to tell our many stories.

Stories matter.Many
stories matter.Stories
have been used to dispossess and to malign,but
stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.Stories
can break the dignity of a people,but
stories can also repair that broken dignity.

I would like to end with this
thought:That
when we reject the single story,when
we realize that there is never a single storyabout
any place,we
regain a kind of paradise.

You
could count endless single stories we have in our own society. For the majority
of our majority co-religionists, a Muslim will be an enemy of the Nation and a
Dalit, a cadger of Government jobs at their cost. But can the majority survive
without their capabilities or talents? If they were not there, who would write
the Ramayana or the Constitution, or regale us with forms of literature and
arts that are unique to our sub-continent- shayari or Hindustani
Classical Music?

1 comment:

I am impressed by the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie because of her rational approach.That's so true that we should not make image of any particular thing and most of time, relying upon that image or reputation we usually avoid that particular thing.